Indra publishing

The third novel of the Lia Mendez trilogy, Taking Wing, will be released in September 2011.

The Lia Mendez trilogy, spans three generations of the Mendez-Kremzier and Heiman families, the paths of their lives intersected by the conflicts and changes which shaped Central Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. Of Exile and Yearning (2009) and Across the Burning (2010) are the first two books of the trilogy.

Set in the era when Europe’s thousand year thrust for universal fraternity detours into the Communist tyranny, Taking Wing follows an ordinary man and an extraordinary woman, Frederic and Lia, as they struggle to stay sane in the face of civic stupidity and individual evil.

Lia is called to open her arms to the difficult truth that has always been her pillar of fire. Frederic, as husband and father, strives to hold on to all that is real, and not be stifled by his natural scepticism. Their children, Regan, inheritor of a past of wonder and betrayal, fights for self-definition, and Mercedes, a child born wounded, seeks the source of healing within.

Taking Wing is a story about belonging and forsaking, the loss of all and the state of abandonment, and finally, the coming to nothing that turns out to be everything under another land’s new stars.

ISBN 9781920787202

Literary fiction

pb 233 x 151 mm

268 pages

$28.95

Catherine Hoffmann’s novel, Across the Burning, will be released by Indra in October 2010.

Across the Burning is the second novel of the Lia Mendez trilogy, an epic which spans three generations of the Mendez-Kremzier and Heiman families, the paths of their lives intersected by the conflicts and changes which shaped Central Europe in the first half of the twentieth century.

Once enthralled by the grand vistas of travel, Frederic returns to Hungary as Europe is about to burst into the fire of World War II. He, a sharp and worldly non-believer, returns to Rudi Wolf, his soul friend, to Lia Mendez, his only love – his two Jewish friends now married, but still welcoming him as part of their life. With passion and loyalty to each other the three friends face the Nazi occupation.

A story of sensibility and identity, of exile, abandonment and returning to yourself.

Of Exile and Yearning, the first book of the trilogy, was released in September 2009.

ISBN   9781920787189

Literary fiction

pb  234 x 150 mm

290 pp

$29.95  

Catherine Hoffmann’s novel, Of Exile and Yearning, was released on 15 September 2009 by Indra Publishing.

Of Exile and Yearning is the first book of the Lia Mendez trilogy.

This epic novel is set in Europe from 1910 to the mid-1930s, exploring lives buffeted by the turbulent historical forces transforming central Europe from the last flourish of the Austro-Hungarian empire to the chilling build-up of the Second World War.

Lia and Frederic meet as children, never declare their love for one another, and yet remain inseparably bonded. From the comfort and security of her Jewish home, Lia chooses her own exile, with devastating effect on her family. Her journey is a personal spiritual quest. Frederic, neither Jewish nor religious, emphatically refuses commitment to any ideal or belief. For him, life is for adventure and travel, the quest for enjoyment, and never to be taken too seriously.

For the continuation of Lia and Frederic’s story, wait for Across the Burning, the second book of the trilogy, to be released in mid-2010.

Catherine’s three earlier works, Perilous Journey (1981), Crystal (1987) and Forms of Bliss (1988), were all published by Greenhouse Publications.

The theatre version of Charlotte Badger was a great success in Charlotte’s place of birth, Bromsgrove in England.

Writer/Director Euan Rose brought the story of Charlotte Badger – Buccaneer to life on stage at the Artrix Theatre, Bromsgrove at the end of October 2008. With packed house every night, the audiences enjoyed the musical comedy based on this real-life story.

For Indra’s author, Angela Badger – we believe a distant relative of Charlotte’s – meeting Euan, the cast and all the backstage people was as much a thrill as the growth in the UK sales of her novel, Charlotte Badger – Buccaneer.

For all who  missed out on a copy of the book, there are still some available. Booksellers in UK, Ireland and anywhere in Europe, order your stock from Gazelle Book Services in Lancaster. (see our Contact us or Ordering page). Distributors in North America, Asia, and Australia & New Zealand are also listed on those pages.

New Zealanders! Don’t miss this opportunity to read the story of the first white woman to live in New Zealand. This young Englishwoman, Charlotte Badger, transported with her baby to New South Wales for a petty crime, took command of a second transport ship which was taking her to the hell-holes of Van Diemens Land and set off across the Tasman with her fellow mutineers. 

Film producers! Euan Rose, who has several films to his credit as well as theatre productions, is writing the screenplay of Charlotte’s story. Please contact Indra Publishing on ian@indrabooks.com for more details and your expression of interest. We look forward to hearing from you.

What did happen to sixteen people on that night in February nearly two hundred years ago??

There are many stories of people lost in the bush. Children who strayed, travellers who disappeared, explorers who never returned to their camps. But when sixteen individuals leave the realm of the living without a single trace and when the one person who witnessed all that happened chose to go to the grave in silence … then there is a mystery indeed. A dark and mysterious novel set in the early 1800s.

Molly McPhee and her daughter, Alice, visit Major Walden in his isolated country home. When Walden is called away on duty, he leaves his convict manservant, Halls, in charge. When he returns, Mollie is dead and Halls and Alice have gone. The indigenous Dharawal – the Water People – offer their explanation of what happened before Alice was swallowed up by the earth.

A nineteenth century mystery set on the shores of Botany Bay, Sydney.

The Water People is the second of Angela Badger’s historical novels from the early convict period. It is based on news reports and anecdotes from the period, which recount how a search party was lost during violent storms on the shores of Botany Bay. They had been searching for a convict who was believed to have abducted a woman after murdering her mother. Only the convict came out of the bush – manacled, exhausted and silent. He died under the lash and his secret died with him.

October 2004, 224 pp
Fiction: 1st Edition
ISBN: 1 92078705 4
Paperback, 210 x 138 mm
RRP: $aud24-95

The Author
Angela Badger was born in the New Forest, Hampshire, England. She emigrated to Australia in 1970 and maintains ongoing contact with UK. Her interest in Australian history is the main source of inspiration for her fiction. In The Water People, Angela fills the gaps in a brief item of news she found in a newsletter of early Sydney.

Angela’s books
The Water People, Indra
Charlotte Badger – Buccaneer, Indra
The Boy from Buninyong

Junior fiction
The River’s Revenge
Poles Apart

Angela is currently researching her next novel, set in southern New South Wales in the late nineteenth century. This novel promises to continue her easy to read style of presenting historical events as lived adventures involving real people.

Who is he? How does he know my name? What does he want of me?These questions mixed with her fascination for a stranger preoccupy Elise Cartwright as she and her family try to make a home in the Norfolk Island penal settlement in the mid-nineteenth century. The settlement is for them as much as for the convicts, a place of exile, a place of punishment.

The Pines Hold Their Secrets is an historical novel set in the notorious penal settlement of Norfolk Island in the 1850s. Elise Cartwright, the daughter of the superintendant of agriculture at the settlement is strangely drawn to an Irish convict who called her by name, requesting her help.

Elise is forced to confront her mother’s bigotry and her society’s smugness in their position of authority and privilege. The Irish priest introduces Elise to his world of American literature while the convict servants introduce her to their world of land-loss, exploitation and famine. Slowly, she learns who ‘her convict’ is, as her family’s fate becomes ever more tightly enmeshed with his.

The novel is based on the historical reality of the Irish famine, the 19th century Young Ireland movement and the notoriety of Norfolk Island as the worst of the colonial Australian penal settlements.

July 1998, 283pp
Paperback, 215 x 138 mm
ISBN 0 9587718 8 X
Fiction, 1st edition
RRP $aud 21.95
ISBN-13 978

The Author
Jill Blee has a BA and an MA in history from Macquarie University, an MA in writing from the University of Western Sydney, and a PhD in History from the University of Ballarat. Her interests are principally in Irish and Irish-Australian history and literature and both have featured in her own writing. Over many years her attention has been focussed on Ballarat and the Irish migrants who settled there during and after the goldrushes of the 1850s.

Jill’s three novels published by Indra all have an Irish flavour -
The Pines Hold Their Secrets,
Brigid and
The Liberator’s Birthday.

The first concerns an Irish convict wrongly banished to Norfolk Island; the second is set in Ireland during the Irish Potato Famine, and the third focuses on a day in the life of an Irish family on the Ballarat goldfields.

Jill’s From the Murray to the Sea, Indra, 2004, is a comprehensive history of the Catholic education system in the Diocese of Ballarat, Australia.

The Irish community who came seeking gold brought their old-world conflict with them to the new land of Australia. The Orange and the Green focussed their antagonism on neighbourhood pubs in 1875, at a time of waning profits and underemployment on the famous Ballarat goldfields.
The mines and mining tragedies loom large in the background as the Catholic community in Ballarat celebrated the centenary of the birth of Daniel O’Connell, known as the Liberator because he won a degree of emancipation for the Catholic majority of Ireland. The mounting pressures of this special day in the life of the Globe Hotel bring young Tommy Farrell to a newfound strength and resolve, breaking free of the bonds of his youth, to claim his own liberation – freedom to believe, freedom to grow and freedom to love.
This novel is down to earth and compelling, but well-crafted and finely balanced. The vernacular of the Irish settlers and their Australian-born children which adds to the flavour of the novel, is authenticated by Jill’s grasp of Irish usage, and her working knowledge of the Irish language.
An interesting insight into early development of the Catholic Church in Australia is presented, not as an interruption to the narrative, but as an integral part of this special day in the life of the Irish in Ballarat.

248pp Paperback, 216 x 138 mm
Fiction, 1st edition
ISBN: 0 9578735 3 0
RRP $aud 23-95
ISBN-13 9780957873539

 The Author, Jill Blee, has a BA and an MA in history from Macquarie University, an MA in writing from the University of Western Sydney, and a PhD in History from the University of Ballarat. Her interests are principally in Irish and Irish-Australian history and literature and both have featured in her own writing. Over many years her attention has been focussed on Ballarat and the Irish migrants who settled there during and after the goldrushes of the 1850s.
Jill’s three novels published by Indra all have an Irish flavour – The Pines Hold Their Secrets, Brigid and The Liberator’s Birthday. The first concerns an Irish convict wrongly banished to Norfolk Island; the second is set in Ireland during the Irish Potato Famine, and the third focuses on a day in the life of an Irish family on the Ballarat goldfields.Jill’s From the Murray to the Sea, Indra, 2004, is a comprehensive history of the Catholic education system in the Diocese of Ballarat, Australia

How can one man stand up against against the will of his own people and refuse to fight in a war he doesn’t believe in? What sort of courage does it take to refuse to become one more brave soldier going off to war?

Or is Gerry’s anti-war attitude just a selfish desire to continue his comfortable life with his girl-friend, his leftist poetry-readings and his botanical research?

Set in New Zealand and Italy during World War ll, this novel portrays the anxieties and dilemma for a man who is conscripted to fight in a war he doesn’t believe in. And when he is conscripted, Gerry Cook realises he is not heroic enough to refuse the call-up. Gerry’s resolution of his dilemma is as clear as it is shocking.

The intensely local setting of Lancewood portrays a very ordinary man and woman confronting universal questions of duty and love, honour and freedom.

In Alan Marshall’s first novel, he provides a perspective on war, in which rebellion against authority is the individual’s main defence.

1999, 210pp
Paperback, 215 x 138 mm
ISBN 0 9585805 1 0
Fiction, 1st Edition
RRP $aud 20.95
ISBN-13 978

The Author
Born in Lower Hutt, New Zealand, Alan Marshall dropped out of high school to travel. He gained his BSc (Hons) from the University of Wolverhampton in England, his M.Phil from Massey University in New Zealand, and completed his doctorate at the University of Wollongong, New south Wales. Alan currently lives in Slovakia.

Lancewood is Alan’s first novel.

When mining magnate, pioneer photographer and public benefactor, Bernhardt Holtermann died prematurely at the height of his success, the speculation and rumours started.

Some who knew Bernhardt closely had guessed the true nature of his relationship with Victoria, his children’s beautiful governess. They enjoyed the lavish parties and genteel soirées given by Harriet – Mrs Holtermmann, but some believed they detected an edge of tension under the formal cordiality between herself and Bernhardt.

Had she tired of being patient with her husband’s attentions to Victoria, or had Victoria tired of waiting for the divorce which would release her lover to become her husband?

Holtermann’s Nugget is an historical novel based on the life of the successful 19th century miner and businessman, the pioneer photographer, Bernhardt Holtermann. Bernhardt came to Sydney as a young man, to avoid conscription and the restrictive life of Hamburg in the 1850s.

Having made his fortune in gold mining at Hill End, Holtermann became famous as one of the most successful businessmen in Sydney during the early 1880s. His tireless drive for building his new country and showing Australia off to the world with magnificent panoramic photographs took him to international trade fairs in Philadelphia and Paris.

Bernhardt’s untimely death on his 47th birthday adds romance and intrigue to this novel of an adventurous life. Holtermann’s main bequest to the nation are his magnificent photographs which won for him international acclaim, and for Australia, international recognition.

2000, 168pp
Paperback, 216 x 138 mm
ISBN 0 9585805 5 3
Historical fiction, 1st Edition
RRP $aud 20.85
ISBN-13 978 0958580557

The Author
Gunter Schaule was born in Germany and, like his hero Bernhardt Holtermann, migrated to Australia to live a different life and make his career in a new country. Gunter has travelled widely, and maintains close friendships with people in all continents. He still manages his own successful business, but allows time for writing and enjoying his life.

Gunter’s previous books, all non-fiction, are all selling successfully internationally. Holtermann’s Nugget is his first novel, and the first of his books to be published by Indra. Gunter lives in Sydney with his wife, Marianne.

Charlotte Badger became the first white woman to live in New Zealand, after taking part in a mutiny which followed two vicious floggings on board a civilian cargo ship. This novel recreates the adventurous life of this remarkable woman fugitive, her daughter, and their fellow mutineers.

Escaping from Van Diemen’s Land and New South Wales after commandeering the colonial brig, the Venus, the mutineers settle for an initially peaceful life with the Maoris in New Zealand. But simmering tensions within their group eventually burst into the open. The peace is shattered and escape to America is the only chance of survival. But how many will reach America?

This is Charlotte’s story, telling the reader in her own voice, the shock of being condemned to transportation, the drudgery of work in the Female Factory, the delight of little Anny, the baby at her breast, and the companionship of fellow convicts and the crew of the Venus, relaxing in the evening, singing on deck en route to Van Diemen’s Land.

Charlotte tells also of the cruel master of the Venus, who delighted in flogging Charlotte and her Irish friend and fellow convict, Kitty; of the terror of a wild storm at sea; escaping from the Maori war canoes, and the antagonism that builds up among the mutineers.

This is a story of courage, of determination and a mother’s love for her child.

June 2002, 248pp
Paperback, 216 x 138 mm
ISBN 0 9578735 2 2
RRP $aud 23.95
ISBN-13 9780957873520

The Author
Angela Badger was born in the New Forest, Hampshire, England. She emigrated to Australia in 1970 and maintains ongoing contact with UK. Her interest in Australian history is the main source of inspiration for her fiction. Charlotte, her daughter Anny, her friends Kitty, Lanky and the others were just names in the historical record until Angela Badger started researching the life of an earlier member of the Badger family.

Angela’s books
The Water People, Indra
Charlotte Badger – Buccaneer, Indra
The Boy from Buninyong

Junior fiction
The River’s Revenge
Poles Apart

Angela is currently researching her next novel, set in southern New South Wales in the late nineteenth century. This novel promises to continue her easy to read style of presenting historical events as lived adventures involving real people.